This Lifetime film had me as soon as I saw the title. Psycho Yoga Instructor? Seriously, is that not the most brilliant title of all time? Apparently, this film was originally called The Perfect Pose and that’s an okay title. I mean, “perfect” is always a good word to use in a title. But you know what’s an even better word to use? Psycho!
Plus, the fact that the title promised not just a psycho but a psycho yoga instructor made me even more excited to see the film. There’s been countless Lifetime film about yoga instructors who ended up getting stalked. But this film’s title shakes things up. This time, it’s the yoga instructor who is the stalker!
Anyway, Psycho Yoga Instructor tells the story of Justine (Ashley Wood). Justine is married to Tom (Brady Smith), who is the type of guy who stays at work late and then, when he gets home, doesn’t even bother to join his wife in bed. Instead, he collapses on the couch, where she inevitably finds him the next morning. Justine is eager to adopt a baby. Tom barely seems to care. Justine is haunted by nightmares in which she’s drowning in the tub and, instead of trying to save her, Tom takes a call from work.
Justine’s best friend, Ginnie (Lily Rains), thinks that Tom is cheating on Justine. She also thinks that Justine should come to her yoga class and ogle the hot yoga instructor, Dominic (Panos Vlahos). Justine is reasonably sure that Tom is not cheating but she still decides that yoga might help her deal with some of her stress.
Dominic, it turns out, is a very good yoga instructor. He’s got wild hair and he spends a lot of time talking about toxins and the barriers that people set up to their own happiness. He takes an interest in Justine and soon, he’s even coming to Justine’s house to give her one-and-one lessons. Justine thinks that Dominic is helping her get in touch with what she really wants out of life. Dominic, meanwhile, spends most of his time staring down Justine’s shirt. Like, seriously, Dom — eyes up!
Tom starts to get jealous and with good reason. Justine is having all sorts of dreams about Dominic and, for the most part, they never end well for Tom. Still, it’s just yoga, right? And Dominic’s not any more quirky than the typical yoga guy, right? Wrong. It turns out that Dominic is more than just a somewhat spacey hot guy. He’s also a …. PSYCHO YOGA INSTRUCTOR!
Admittedly, it does take a while to get around to the psycho part of Psycho Yoga Instructor but I still liked the film. The character of Dominic was so hilariously vapid and Panos Vlahos seemed to be having so much fun smirking and talking about toxins that it was impossible not to enjoy his performance. Justine’s recurring dreams were also well-shot and genuinely creepy. The one where Justine was under water while her husband laughed at her especially got to me. The film was as cheerfully trashy as you would hope that a film with a title like Psycho Yoga Instructor would be. In the end, that’s what really matters.
If you’ve watched enough Lifetime films, you know that it’s rarely a good thing when you’re living near a vineyard.
I mean, sure, there’s a certain amount of romance to them. Any single mom who lives in a house near a vineyard is guaranteed to meet at least one handsome stranger. And, of course, living near a vineyard always means that you have a steady supply of wine so that you can have a fun girl’s night with your sassy, sex-obsessed best friend.
But, seriously, bad stuff happens in those vineyards. It seems like people are always getting chased around the vineyards. Often times, spending a night in the vineyards is a good way to get yourself murdered. Even if you somehow manage to survive your night in the vineyards, there’s still a good chance that you’ll end up getting kidnapped and tied up in someone’s wine cellar. Vineyards just aren’t worth the trouble. As if to prove my point, Murder in the Vineyard aired on Lifetime on July 18th. I recorded it on my DVR (which, unlike a vineyard, is always a good place to visit) and then I watched it earlier today.
Murder in the Vineyard starts off on a good note by featuring a murder in a vineyard. Within the first few minutes, the film has already lived up to its name and that’s definitely something that I appreciated. Once we get the first murder out of the way, we met Emma Kirk (Helena Mattsson) and her teenage daughter, Bea (Emma Fuhrmann). Emma has just taken over the family winery and Bea is struggling to fit in at her new school. While Emma reconnects with a childhood love, Bea strikes up a tentative relationship with the school football star.
Unfortunately, not everyone at the school is happy about the idea of Bea showing up out of nowhere and dating one of the most popular guys in the class. The snobby cheerleaders, who we’re told have a history of hazing new students, start to target her. Suddenly, there’s a website that’s devoted exclusively to harassing Bea. Nasty rumors are being spread about her at school. When she goes to a party, someone slips something into her drink. Someone is targeting Bea and, as you might guess from that murder that we saw earlier in the movie, that someone is prepared to go to extremes.
As far as dangerous vineyard movies are concerned, Murder in the Vineyard was a good one. There was enough suspense over who was harassing Bea that the film worked as a mystery and the scenes when Emma reconnects with Luke (Daniel Hall) were enjoyable. Helena Mattsson and Daniel Hall made for a cute couple so you definitely hoped the best for them. Mattsson and Emma Fuhrmann were also believable as mother and daughter and anyone who was overprotected by their mom will be able to relate to some of what Bea goes through. Probably the best thing about the film is that the vineyard was pretty. It was a bit like a Lifetime version ofSideways, in that as much emphasis was put on the beauty of the California landscape as on the plot. If someone’s going to get murdered in your vineyard, it should at least be a pretty one.
Mile High Escorts aired on Lifetime on July 19th. Because I was hosting the #ScarySocial live tweet of City of the Living Dead, I missed it but thanks to my DVR, I was able to record it and watch it earlier today. Seriously, will there ever be a better invention than the DVR?
Mile High Escorts tells the story of Lauren (Saxon Sharbino). Lauren is a flight attendant. She gets to fly all over the world and she’s even put in a request to be assigned to the Paris route. How could her life get any better? Well, don’t ever take your happiness for granted because reality soon intrudes on Lauren’s perfect world. The airline announces that they’re going to be cutting back on flights, which means that Lauren and her friend Ashley (Kara Royster) are going to be flying less and also making a lot less money! But Lauren needs that money because her father is on the verge of getting kicked out of his home. And Ashley needs the money because …. well, Hell, who doesn’t need money? (I totally related to Ashley.)
Fortunately, a chance meeting with Hannah (Christina Moore) might be just the solution to Lauren and Ashley’s problems. Hannah owns a private airline and she’s always looking for new flight attendants. Because her airline is exclusively used by wealthy, handsome, and single (if just for the weekend) men, her flight attendants have to be attractive and they have to be friendly. They also have to be willing to spend time with their clients even after the airplane has landed. She offers Lauren a job but Lauren, at first, is reluctant. It sounds too much like an escort service to her, largely because it is. But then Lauren’s hours get cut and her father’s unpaid bills start to pile up and soon, Lauren and Ashley are mile high escorts!
At first, everything seems great but, as we soon discover, the life of a mile high escort is not a simple one. Sure, at first, it’s a lot of fun. All of the passengers are handsome and rich and like to have a good time. Lauren even makes a connection with Thomas (Esteban Benito), who appears to be a rare nice guy. But this is a Lifetime movie so you know the fun can’t last. It turns out that the private airline business is indeed a shady one and someone is murdering mile high escorts. Can Lauren and Ashley figure out what’s going on before they become the next victims?
I absolutely loved Mile High Escorts. This movie had everything that I love about Lifetime movies. The plot was melodramatic and full of scheming and sex. The clothes were to die for. The men were handsome. Christina Moore did a great job keeping you guessing as to Hannah’s motivations and both Saxon Sharbino and Kara Royster were likable in the lead roles. This was a fun Lifetime film. You don’t watch a film like this and worry about whether or not the plot makes total sense. You certainly don’t watch a film like this because you’re hoping for a realistic portrait of what it means to be a mile high escort. You watch a film like this because it’s fun! And Mile High Escorts definitely was.
Today’s song of the day is the Theme from The Stendhal Syndrome. Composed by Ennio Morricone, this piece of music creates a perfectly creepy atmosphere for Dario Argento’s 1996 film, The Stendhal Syndrome. Argento’s later, post-Opera films are often treated rather dismissively by critics but I’ve always liked The Stendhal Syndrome. I definitely like Morricone’s score.
A man named Hank (Jeremy Gardner), who owns a pretty nice house out in the country, is holding a shotgun. He’s just shot a hole through his front door. Later, when the sun rises, he’ll walk around his land, carrying his gun and searching for anything that shouldn’t be there. When an unfamiliar car drives down the road, he fires at it.
Hank has a few reasons for being paranoid. He’s convinced that there’s something out there. For the past two weeks, Hank claims that there’s been a monster scratching at the front door. His friends tell him that it’s probably just a bear but Hank swears that it’s not. It’s too big and strong and strange to be a bear. It’s a monster, Hank swears.
Most of his friends assume that Hank is losing it. It probably doesn’t help that Hank started talking about this monster around the same time that his girlfriend Abby (Brea Grant), left him. Hanks claims that he has no idea why Abby left. He assumes that she’s down in Florida with an old boyfriend but he doesn’t know for sure. Whenever anyone suggests that he might want to think about why he and Abby are having problems, Hank steers the conversation back to the monster that he claims is trying to break into the house.
Hank spends his nights waiting for the monster and thinking about Abby. We see flashbacks to his relationship with Abby and what we immediately notice is that they always seem to be happy. In Hank’s memories, we never see them fighting or any hints that there was ever any trouble in their relationship. Yet, no one seems to be surprised that Abby left Hank so, obviously, it was clear to everyone else that Abby wasn’t happy. Are we seeing real memories of Hank and Abby or are we just seeing things the way that Hank has chosen to remember them?
After Midnight is a hybrid of a horror movie and a relationship drama. It’s definitely not a film for everyone. It moves at its own deliberate pace. Some of the dialogue is a bit overwritten and I’m still not really sure how Hank managed to get away with firing a shotgun at a moving car. (The film explains that he’s got a relative on the police force but it still seems like a bit of a stretch.) There’s a very lengthy scene that is just made up of a largely static shot of Abby and Hank talking about their relationship. It’s one of those scene that you’re either going to love or you’re going to hate. Myself, I liked the fact that the film was just as concerned with Abby and Hank as a couple as it was with whatever was hiding in the darkness. It helped that Gardner and Grant were a likable and believable couple. That said, if you’re only watching this film for the horror elements, you’ll probably get annoyed.
However, After Midnight also features what is perhaps one of the greatest jump scares that I’ve ever seen. It occurs towards the end of the film so yes, it does demand a little bit of patience on your part. But that patience will be rewarded! Seriously, I’m not going to spoil it but I will say that I literally fell off my couch in shock when it happened. It was a perfectly executed moment and one that entirely justified that patience required to reach it.
After Midnight is on Prime. It’s not for everyone but I liked it.
Today’s song of the day comes to use from Ennio Morricone’s score for Umberto Lenzi’s 1974 giallo Spasmo.
As I was listening to this music, I took a few minutes to think about all of the directors with whom Morricone worked over his career. Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, Quentin Tarantino, Roland Joffe, Sergio Corbucci, Umberto Lenzi, Terrence Malick, Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava, Don Seigel, John Carpenter, Brian DePalma, Franco Zefferelli, Barry Levinson, and so many more, all of them collaborated with Morricone. His music brought to life the work of so many artists. That’s certainly the case with Spasmo.
As far as states go, Arkansas usually doesn’t get much respect. In a country where much of the culture is dominated by city-dwelling secular liberals, Arkansas is a state the remains stubbornly rural, religious, and conservative. If your grandparents were a state, they’d probably look a lot like Arkansas. Arkansas is viewed as being old-fashioned and when it does make the news, it’s usually not for anything that anyone in the state particularly wants to brag about. Democrats will always view Arkansas as being the home of Mike Huckabee. Republicans will never forgive the state for springing the Clintons on the rest of the nation. (Interestingly enough, Mike Huckabee and Bill Clinton both grew up in the same tiny town.) Little Rock has gangs and government corruption. Hot Springs has gamblers looking to hide out from the mob. Fouke has the Boggy Creek Monster while Ft. Smith is best-known for having once been home to the hanging judge, Isaac Parker. You get the idea. When it comes to the way that the rest of the country views the state, it often seems as if poor Arkansas just can’t catch a break.
With all that in mind, I have to say that I really love Arkansas. My paternal grandparents lived in Arkansas and I’ve still got relatives all over the state. Arkansas was one of the many states where my family lived while I was growing up. (The others were — deep breath — Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Louisiana.) We would stay in Arkansas for months at a time, depending on how well my mom and dad were getting along at the time. It’s an unpretentious state, one that’s full of friendly, no-nonsense people and beautiful countryside. I have a lot of good memories of Arkansas. It’s always in the back of my mind that, wherever I’m living, I can always just go back to Arkansas and spend the rest of my life living in a small town with my cousins. Of course, I’d probably end up miserable over the lack of movie theaters. Whenever I’m living in the city, I find myself yearning for the simplicity and decency of the country. Whenever I’m in the country, I find myself missing the excitement of the city.
The Natural State (as Arkansas is officially nicknamed) is not only the setting for some of my most cherished memories. It’s also the setting for a film called, appropriately enough, Arkansas. The directorial debut of actor Clark Duke, Arkansas tells the story of four very different men. Kyle Ribb (Liam Hemsworth) is quiet and rather stoic. Swin Horn (Clark Duke) is talkative, eccentric, and perhaps a bit too cocky for his own good. They both work at a national park, where their boss is a veteran ranger named Bright (John Malkovich). Of course, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to notice that neither Kyle nor Ribb really seem to do much work at the park. And, for that matter, Bright certainly does own a big and impressive house for someone who has spent the majority of his life as a ranger….
Kyle, Swin, and Bright are actually drug dealers. They transport drugs all over the southern half of the United States. Kyle and Swin are supervised by Bright. Bright, meanwhile, reports to the mysterious Frog. Kyle and Swin have never actually met Frog and there are rumors that he might not even exist. Of course, the film has already revealed to us that Frog (played by Vince Vaughn) does exist and is a local pawnshop owner.
Kyle narrates the film, informing us that the difference between Southern organized crime and Northern organized crime is that, in the South, it’s not all that organized. As Kyle explains it, the infamous Dixie Mafia is not so much an organization as it’s just a collection of undisciplined lowlifes who have no real integrity or loyalty to anyone else. When you become a drug dealer in the South, you’re a drug dealer for life. There’s no going back if you change your mind. You start out at the bottom of the ladder and, whenever someone above you if either murdered or imprisoned, you get your chance to move up. No one is ever sure who is working for who or who can be trusted. Every order from the boss is examined and re-examined as the two dealers try to figure out whether or not they’ve won the trust of the mysterious Frog.
Unfortunately for Kyle and Swin, a misunderstanding leads to violence and several deaths. With no way to directly communicate with Frog to let him know what exactly happened, Kyle and Swin know that their lives could be in danger. The film follows Kyle and Swin as they prepare for their ultimate meeting with Frog while, at the same time, detailing in flashback how Frog himself eventually came to his position of power. Throughout the entire film, we watch as history repeats itself. As Kyle said, once you’re a drug dealer, you’re a drug dealer for life.
Arkansas is a surprisingly low-key film. Kyle, Swin, Bright, and Frog all manage to be both very laid back and very aggressive at the same time. (Anyone who has spent anytime with a large group of rednecks will understand what I’m talking about.) As a director, Clark Duke is as interested in capturing the rhythms of every day life in Arkansas as he is in orchestrating the inevitable violence that results from all of the film’s betrayals and mistakes and some of the best scenes in the film just feature Kyle and Swin talking about nothing in particular while driving down the interstate. The film’s mix of cheerful goofiness and existential horror will be familiar to anyone who has ever gotten lost on the way to Hot Springs.
Liam Hemsworth and Clark Duke are sympathetic in the lead roles, though Hemsworth’s Southern accent does slip a few times. Swin meets a woman (Eden Brolin) in a grocery store and their subsequent romance manages to be both creepy and touching at the same time. John Malkovich is, as usual, wonderfully eccentric. That said, the film is pretty much dominated by Vince Vaughn, who plays Frog as being both dangerously ruthless and also as someone who understands that his eventual downfall is inevitable. Frog came to power by betraying his boss and, as played by Vaughn, Frog is very much aware that he’s destined to eventually be betrayed as well. Frog has made peace with both his place in the world and the reality of his situation and, in many ways, that makes him an even more dangerous character than he would be otherwise. He has nothing to lose and he knows it.
Obviously, I liked Arkansas, both the state and the movie. It’s an well-done work of Southern pulp.
Today’s song of the day comes from the 1988 film, Frantic. This composition, like all of the other songs of the day that we’ve featured over the past two weeks, was composed by the great Ennio Morricone.
Today’s song of the day comes from The Legend of 1900, a 1998 film that probably deserves to be a bit better known than it is. The film’s score was composed by the great Ennio Morricone. Today’s song from Morricone is The Legend of the Pianist.
After you watched Carlito’s Way, you may have asked yourself, “Gee, I wonder how Carlito came to power in the first place? I wonder what he was like when he was young….”
Now, keep in mind, you may have asked yourself that. I did not ask myself that. To be honest, I didn’t really care. Carlito’s Way pretty much told me everything that I needed to know about Carlito’s past. Just the fact that people on the street respected him as soon as he got out of prison and that everyone was trying to get him to restart his life of crime told me that Carlito was obviously a big deal in the past. So, I didn’t really need a prequel.
But, obviously, the people behind the 2005 film, Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power, disagreed. I guess I can understand their logic. When you’ve got a hit film, it’s only natural to try to do a follow-up. And when the first film ends with the main character dying, you really don’t have much choice but to do a prequel. And let’s give credit where credit is due. Long before the movies were made, Carlito Brigante was the main character of two novels written by Edwin Torres. Carlito’s Way: Rise To Power is based on the first of those novels and Torres reportedly said that he appreciated that the prequel stuck close to what he had written. So, it’s not like they just made up this film’s plot out of thin air.
That said, it’s still not a very good film. It takes place in the 60s, with young Carlito (Jay Hernandez) working his way up the ladder in New York’s drug chain. His partners, who he met in jail, are Earl (Mario Van Peebles) and Rocco (Michael Kelly). When they’re release from jail, they find themselves in the middle of drug war between Hollywood Nicky (Sean Combs) and the Bottolota Family, led by Artie (Burt Young). The three friends play the two sides against each other while also dealing with all of the usual betrayals and random violence that one normally expects to find in a movie like this. Luis Guzman shows up, playing a coke-snorting hitman named Nacho. It’s a bit disconcerting since Guzman played a different character in Carlito’s Way but it’s still always good to see Luis Guzman.
Anyway, the main problem with Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power can be seen in the casting of the main characters. Carlito’s Way had Al Pacino, Sean Penn, and John Leguizamo. Rise To Power has Jay Hernandez and Mario Van Peebles. Whatever gritty authenticity the film may be aiming for vanishes as soon as Mario Van Peebles looks straight at camera and smiles at his reflection. As for Jay Hernandez, he’s a likable actor but he’s the exact opposite of intimidating. You’d probably say yes if he asked you to prom but he does’t exactly come across like someone who could take over the New York drug racket. When Sean Combs is the most dangerous person in your movie, you’re looking at trouble.
Director Michael Bregman attempts to imitate a bit of Brian De Palma’s style from the first film and Jay Hernandez does his best to sound Pacino-like in his voice-over narration but the end result is flat and predictable. This is an offer that you can refuse.
Through the Shattered Lens 